Birds and Prey (11 page)

And Aranion, the fool, was running toward her as though he could negotiate with the storm.

Sade was weeping now. Her vision was blurring through the tiny eyeholes of her mask, and she couldn’t breathe. But the wind was inside her, so when Aranion came close enough to touch her, she stepped out of his grasp.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Sade said. And, as a truth, that meant something. Hurting him was hurting herself, and the pain of the bond – the pain Sade had been experiencing all this time -- had been the pain of their separation.

Laire had known this and kept it to herself. But it had been Laire who had taken Sade. Laire who had ripped her memories away and trained Sade to serve the princess’s every whim.

Bile rose to the back of Sade’s throat.

Desperately, she tried to open her hand and drop the knife, but it was a part of her now. She saw, with a sense of inevitability, that the hilt had fused into the flesh of her palm. The knife was using her as
its
weapon now.

And, if Aranion kept coming at her, the knife would use Sade as its instrument to take her soul-mate’s life.

The dance moved through Sade -- faster and faster. The guards were coming now. Good – finally! Maybe they could stop her. She certainly couldn’t stop herself.

But Aranion -- the lovesick fool -- cried, “Stay back! Don’t touch her!” The guards stopped, then warily took up positions in a loose semicircle around the couple.

“I can’t stop it,” Sade told him. “You have to run!”

Sade had only three steps until the knife finished its work, and Aranion was doing nothing to defend himself. Nothing to get away. He stood before her, in front of the gap between the branches, and opened his arms.

He said, “I’m not living apart from you again.”

She hated him. She loved him.

These were the final steps of the dance. Sade drew the wind into her for one final strike.

‘You are his greatest weakness,’ the wind whispered.

That was her answer.

In the silence that followed the wind’s declaration, Sade ran.

She ran past the prince. And, though the knife wrenched her arm towards him, spinning her backward, her momentum was still enough to carry Sade over the edge.

The knife, still eager for its target, ripped itself from her hand, taking with it a strip of flesh, but without a body to fuel the knife’s will, it too fell.

Sade closed her eyes, and opened her arms to the wind.

She was, at long last, free.

Perhaps because Haytham too was tapped into the song of the wind, he felt the moment when Sade chose to jump.

He whirled, leaving Meldigur behind, and shifted as he ran. The agony of his change overcome by the terror that when Sade died, it would be too late to save their mission, too late for him to redeem his freedom. He refused to acknowledge the deeper fear: the loss he would feel without her.

Haytham reached the edge of the temple grounds just as the prince screamed and leaped, following Sade to her death. One of his guards seized him, holding him back, and Haytham charged past them both. His wings ripped through his clothes as he dove off the edge.

He hurtled toward the ground. Despair filled him. In the darkness, he could barely make out Sade’s form, and even with the wind’s guidance, Haytham might not be able to fall fast enough to catch her before she hit earth.

The only upside was that she seemed to have spread herself out, arms reaching out to either side, her emerald robes catching in the air like a giant sail. Haytham pointed his beak to the ground, using every trick he knew to reduce the resistance of the wind.

They were falling too fast, the ground too close, and Haytham desperately changed position, folding his wings to his body as he grabbed for her waist.

He missed, ripping though silk, and tried again. This time, he felt her solid weight, and immediately opened his wings, trying to slow their fall without giving her body a fatal jolt in the process. They glided precariously between the trunks of the Crystal Court, and then, too low for gliding, fell together in feather and silk to the earth, skidding over the mossy roots and rotting leaves.

Releasing Sade from his grip, Haytham caught his breath. His talons had slashed through the silk robes and dug into Sade’s flesh, leaving two long cuts at her waist and blood spattered on his claws. But she was alive. She was alive.

Haytham forced himself to return to human form. He was trembling with adrenaline, shock, fear, and a mix of many other things.

Sade sat up, among the roots and rocks. She was covered in bits of mold and dirt; she was scratched and bruised, her robes were mostly destroyed, her mask had flown off, and her hair was more tangled than Haytham had ever seen it before. She was beautiful.

“You saved me!” she said. Her voice was a mix of awe and wonder.

Haytham was filled with so many emotions that he didn't trust himself to answer. He looked down at the phosphorescent moss, growing beneath where he’d rested his hands.

“Where’s the knife?” he asked gruffly.

“It fell,” Sade said. She was holding her right hand against her chest, gripping it with her left. In the glow of the moss, Haytham could see dark blood welling between her fingers.

“Well,” Haytham said, “you can use any knife. It’s harder, but it will work. I’ll give you mine.”

She stared at him for a moment, as if she didn’t understand. Then she shook her head. “I can’t kill him.”

“I’ll help you!” he said. “We’ll dance together. My hand will guide yours.”

“I won’t.”

The geis tightened around Haytham. He felt it cutting into his second flesh.

“You
have
to do it,” he whispered.

Haytham was shaking. He had failed. He
couldn’t
have failed…

But the geis, knew the truth no matter how he tried to delude himself.

He had failed, and badly. And he had failed twice. He had failed to fulfill the geis on which his whole future hung. And he had failed again, when he’d
fallen in love with a mortal whose soul belonged to someone else.

“Haytham? What’s wrong?” Sade’s voice became alarmed. “What did she do to you?”

“Take this,” Haytham said, handing Sade the charm. “You’ll be able to go back to your prince.”

She shook her head. “I can’t leave you,” she said.

The healing the Edenost queen had done so many years ago was unraveling. He could feel the change snaking through him, like poison through his veins.

Desperately, Haytham tried to call the shift to him. But he couldn’t touch the magic. He couldn’t change.

And here, in the stagnant arms of the forest base, even the wind was silent.

“You have to go,” Haytham told her. “Laire will know the geis has been broken. She will send her hunt for us. Go to your prince. He will protect you.”

“And what about you? I’m not leaving you for her creatures to torture and kill.”

“I am her creature too,” Haytham said. “She has my wings, and now she always will. It is…” How to explain this to Sade? “It is better for me to die.”

“No!” she said explosively, suddenly angry. “Do you think
I
didn’t feel that, every day, suffering from this wound in my heart? But I didn’t give up. Laire took – God –“ She was in his face, now. Haytham blinked, startled. “She took my memories, my freedom – she even replaced my name with her own! So
what
if she has your wings?” she demanded fiercely. “We will make you new ones. Haytham… I’ve
never
had wings. And even so, you taught me how to fly!”

Haytham stared at her.

Sade was a marvel. And Haytham loved her. Loved her for her strength, and for the way she had defied the entire Edenost court.

Loved her, even though her defiance, her refusal to let Laire define her destiny, had cost him everything he’d ever wanted: his freedom, his wings… and even, he admitted in his heart, Sade herself.

“
Please
,” Sade said. Her right palm was still seeping blood. And blood was soaking through her tattered robes from the angry slashes where his claws had dug into her waist. But she put her arms around him anyway. Caressed the place on his back where his wings had sprouted. And, though the wings would never return, he felt the pain soothed by her touch.

Stay here? Stay
with
her? Watching Sade and Aranion together would be a torture worse than any Laire could ever devise, with all her fiendish cruelty. Haytham had no desire at all to live in the shadow of a bond that he would never share.

But he couldn’t bring himself to hurt Sade by saying that.

Just as he couldn’t bring himself to hurt her by choosing death.

He loved her.

But instead of burdening either of them with those terrible words, Haytham only nodded. He watched Sade’s face light up, with mingled joy and pain.

That would be his life from now on, he thought: moments of joy, and, perhaps, hours, days, weeks – years? – of loss, loneliness, and pain.

At least he would have freedom, of one kind. He was free of Edenost, of its claustrophobic surroundings, its arrogant rulers, its mannered cruelty.

But had it been it worth it?

He had been feeling so much, so strongly, that he thought his heart might have gone numb. It was just as well, he thought. It might protect him from the pain, as he watched Sade raise Laire’s charm in her hands, preparing to use it to carry them both to her beautiful prince’s arms – and carry Sade away from him forever.

End of Book 2

Standing on the edge of the desert, Aranion looked across the barren plain of blood-red rock. It stretched as far as he could see, all the way to the Hell’s Teeth mountain range with its jagged peaks reaching skyward.

Aranion had set out over two months ago in search of Sade, the mortal woman he had fallen in love with. The burning agony of his broken soul-bond had pulled him first towards the Edenost Court, and now here.

As a fugitive from both elven courts, he didn’t dare use magic. He ate what he could gather, and drank when he found river or rain. He had tied a piece of silk over his nose and mouth, and a scarf over his forehead. Still, the unceasing wind from the mountains ahead beat dust against the exposed parts of his face.

The walk had worn Aranion to his bones. Now, for the first time since he’d escaped his father’s court and started north, he looked across the rocks to the jagged mountains, and wondered if the soul-bond had led him astray. Princess Laire and her court were bound by geis not to hurt Sade -- but how could the mortal survive in such a lifeless place? Though Aranion had trained as a ranger for over two decades, and thought himself able to master most terrain, these mountains daunted even him.

Closing his eyes, Aranion forced himself to open -- body, mind, and heart -- to the bleeding wound of his soul-bond once again.

“Where is she?”

The soul-bond did not answer in words. But the call towards the mountains grew stronger. Sade was there.

Aranion took a drink from his waterskin, and stepped out onto the blood-red rocks.

He had been walking for almost an hour -- eyes half-shut and head bowed into the wind -- when from his left he heard a low growl. He whirled reflexively, coming fully alert even as he reached for his bow.

The dyrewolf stood as tall as Aranion’s waist. It had thick red fur -- a few shades darker than the rocks. When it crouched, it looked like a shadow with shining black eyes. The beast bared its large white canines in a snarl.

Moving with the speed of reflex and not thought, Aranion nocked an arrow. He was in trouble. With magic, he could take a single dyrewolf -- perhaps two. But dyrewolves hunted in packs, and Aranion couldn’t use magic without alerting both his own court and Edenost to his exact location. Either way, he would lose Sade -- perhaps forever.

The wolf leaped. As it sprang, Aranion let his arrow fly. It landed just above the dyrewolf’s shoulder blade, but, he saw with dismay, the beast’s thick fur kept it from penetrating the flesh.

The dyrewolf landed on top of him, digging its claws into his shoulders as its powerful muzzle bit down at Aranion’s neck.

Desperate, his shoulders aflame with an agony that rivaled that of the broken soul-bond within, Aranion reached for his heartblade and, aiming wildly, plunged it into the beast’s neck.

Blood poured over him and the beast retracted its claws, staggering sideways. Aranion rolled from beneath it.

He saw, without surprise, that a second beast was circling. If the Gods loved him at all, he thought, the second dyrewolf would attack the first.

Slowly, Aranion backed away from the second dyrewolf, staring it down. The bow in his hand was bent from the fall, and a scattering of arrows lay on the ground. The arrows were lost, but he’d fix the bow later if he survived.

No – he corrected himself – he
would
survive. He had to survive. He had vowed to find Sade, and he couldn’t die until she was his again.

The second dyrewolf, intimidated by Aranion’s show of strength, threw itself on the first, tearing into its flesh. Relief washed over Aranion like a flood. He turned to run — but found himself staring down a third beast, fangs bared.

Aranion reached for his knife. Blood was seeping from his throbbing shoulders, and his mouth was dry with adrenalin and dread.

Facing down a dyrewolf with a knife would be a foolish move, even for someone who wasn’t already gravely injured. Someone who hadn’t been worn down to his essence by an endless, desperate search. How foolish would it be if he died here, within a few days’ walk of finding his love? His soul-bonded mate?

The voice of temptation whispered that a simple traveling spell was all it would take to escape. But if he did that, he risked losing everything he’d been working for these past, hellish months.

The wolf
sprang for him. Aranion sidestepped it heavily, bringing up the knife. But the beast was faster. He just managed to whip his head to the side as the beast snapped at Aranion’s face, sinking its teeth into Aranion’s scarf and yanking it away with a shake of its massive head. Blinded by the fabric, Aranion raised the knife and struck blindly, desperately, in its side and belly. But the knife was too shallow. He heard the beast scream -- a long, agonized howl that was full of fresh rage – and felt and heard it crouching to attack again.